Audio Foundation is pleased to announce a nationwide tour for HackedePicciotto, stalwarts of Berlin’s legendary underground culture of the ’80s and ’90s and giants of multimedia art and industrial music.

Both artists are legends of their own making: Danielle de Picciotto moved to Berlin in 1987 where she became the lead singer of the band Space Cowboys, co-initiator of the Love Parade, and frequent collaborator with the Ocean Club alongside Gudrun Gut. Alexander Hacke is founding member and bass player of avant-legends, Einstürzende Neubauten. Over two decades, the duo has collaborated in countless international projects in addition to regularly releasing their own compositions.

In 2010, de Picciotto and Hacke made the decision to abandon their home, forging a nomadic path from one city to the next, eschewing all sense of fixity and stability along the way. The absence of a permanent place of return has since informed their work, which they produce relentlessly in search of“external & internal clarity, archaic principles and philosophies, and the means to master the rigours of the road.” The duo describes the cause for their restlessness as stemming from “gentrification, and the annihilation of individualism, as wells as the rising cost of living and the relentless sellout by the mainstream entertainment industry.” In response, “artists need to find new ways of working … in order to upkeep integrity and autonomy. The old patterns no longer function.”

After years of live performance, the intensity of Hacke-dePicciotto shows, along with the duo’s reputation for existential angst, proceeds their arrival. de Picciotto’s Hurdy Gurdy, autoharp and kemenche combined with Hacke’s virtuosic lines on bass, guitar and percussion, punctuated by melancholic, translucent harmonies and underpinned by low electronic rumbles. The soundscapes engendered by this collage bring forth a mesmerizing universe of sound and emotion, leaving audiences both shaken and overjoyed.